This chair was brought to me after the customer's friend tried to cane it by placing masking tape around the seat to mark the strands of cane and gave up part way. The tape was left on the chair for quite a while. Some of it came off, but left a heavy residue which is very difficult to remove. A section of the tape on the front of the chair actually dried into the finish and could only be removed by soaking in oil and bringing up the finish with it. Tape residue will have to be worked off the chair so that the finish isn't damaged further.

Here are the before and afters of the Lincoln rocker from the last blog entry. It was brought to me to have a new seat woven. The faulty seat was woven within the last year by another caner and was done incorrectly causing the cane to pull out. Here is what I did differently to do the job right.

Today I had a beautiful Lincoln Rocker dropped off with a brand new seat that is falling apart.

My dad (who is now retired from caning) had done the seat and back 25 years ago. The back is holding up beautifully and the cane has darkened to a nice honey brown. Backs always last longer than seats since they carry much less weight and wear. 25 years for a well used caned seat is an excellent lifespan.

The new seat is less than a year old and the man that they had hired to re-cane the seat did not stand by his work and accused the customers of standing on the seat (remember- its a rocking chair). Upon seeing the chair I can tell right away that that was not the case. The problem is a bad caning job. How can you tell the caning was not done correctly?

All my work is special to me, but every once and a while I get the opportunity to work on really rare pieces. This rocking chair has been in its owner's family for many generations and was used by teachers in the family to grade papers on the extra large right arm which can be lowered and tucked out of the way when not in use.

I replace and restored the seat to match the original close weave caning back. The last repair was done with splint and as you can tell it had aged and given way. I also added upholstery grade padding within the seat weaving to help distribute weight evenly, prolong the life of the new caning, and to make it a more comfortable seat.